Unlike the cosmopolitan soup of Kufa, Malik saw Medina as the bastion of the pure Islam the Prophet had originally taught. He believed that the customs and practices of Medina’s scholars were the true vehicle of the Sunna and a peerless guide to how to live as a Muslim. The strange Hadiths circulating in Damascus or Egypt seemed suspicious to Malik, and in some cases even Hadiths he heard from his own teacher, Nafi‘, who had heard them from the caliph Umar’s son, who had heard them from the Prophet, were not definitive for him.
